1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to accessing information in a computer network environment such as the Internet, and more specifically to a system, method, and program for enabling a user to select hyperlinks while reading a displayed first document, but not retrieving the hyperlinked documents until the user has indicated that the user has finished reading the displayed first document.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computational devices continue to proliferate throughout the world, there also continues to be an increase in the use of networks connecting these devices. Computational devices include large mainframe computers, workstations, personal computers, laptops and other portable devices including wireless telephones, personal digital assistants, automobile-based computers, etc. Such portable computational devices are also referred to as “pervasive” devices. The term “computer” or “computational device”, as used herein, may refer to any of such device which contains a processor and some type of memory.
The computational devices may be connected in any type of network including the Internet, an intranet, a local area network (LAN) and/or a wide area network (WAN). The network connections may be wired or wireless communication links or fiber optic cables. Many such networks may be organized using a client/server architecture, in which “server” computational devices manage resources, such as files, peripheral devices, or processing power, which may be requested by “client” computational devices. “Proxy servers” can act on behalf of other machines, such as either clients or servers.
A widely used network is the Internet. The Internet, initially referred to as a collection of “interconnected networks”, is a set of computer networks, possibly dissimilar, joined together by means of gateways that handle data transfer and the conversion of messages from the sending network to the protocols used by the receiving network. When capitalized, the term “Internet” refers to the collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite or protocols.
Currently, the most commonly employed method of transferring data over the Internet is to employ the World Wide Web environment, referred to herein as “the Web”. Other Internet resources exist for transferring information, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Gopher, but have not achieved the popularity of the Web. In the Web environment, servers and clients effect data transfer using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a known protocol for handling the transfer of various data files (e.g., text, still graphic images, audio, motion video, etc.).
A Web browser on a client enables a user to specify a Web location through a displayed link or by inputting the URL of the location. The Web browser sends the URL request using the HTTP protocol. The request is sent to the Internet which determines which server to send the request to. A Web server receives the request using the HTTP protocol; and sends the requested page, document, or object (including image, video, audio, etc.) to the Web browser client. The content is displayed on the client's computer screen through the Web browser. It should be noted that a page, document, or object is referred to as a document or as content. The terms “document” and “content” are used interchangeably herein.
The displayed content typically contains hyperlinks to other content. By clicking on the hyperlink, the hyperlinked content is displayed as a result of the communication between the Web browser and a Web server as discussed above. Since each displayed hyperlinked document may also contain hyperlinks to other documents, it is possible for a user to branch further and further away from the document initially displayed. To help a user return to previously displayed content, a Web browser has a “back” and “forward” button. With each click of the “back” button, the user can step back through the linked documents in the reverse order that they were initially traversed. The “back” button is a very useful feature for users using a Web browser. It helps users from getting lost as they traverse down various hyperlinked paths; and it ensures that the users can get back to a beginning of a path of traversed hyperlinks.
Although the “back” button is an indispensable feature in Web browsers, it does have its drawbacks and inconveniences in some situations. For example, before a user finishes reading a first document of interest, the user may come across a first hyperlink of interest. The user may select this hyperlink and end up branching further and further away from the original document as hyperlinks are followed in each subsequent document. If the user wants to get back to the first document of interest to finish reading it, the user may have to repeatedly select the back button until all of the subsequently displayed pages are redisplayed in reverse order and the first document is finally redisplayed. Again, as the user continues to read the first document, the user may find another hyperlink of interest and continue down one or more of the many paths of hyperlinked documents that it may lead to. Again, the user must repeatedly select the back button and wait for all of the subsequently displayed documents to be redisplayed in reverse order until the first document is redisplayed.
If the user just waits until the user finishes reading the first document before selecting a hyperlink of interest, the user may forget which hyperlinks were of initial interest to the user. The user may then unnecessarily reread portions of the document to try to remember which hyperlinks were of interest.
Also, even more problems are encountered when viewing Web documents on small devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), palmtops, Internet enabled cell phones, etc. The display area of these small devices is somewhat limited as compared to the display area for desktop or laptop computer systems. Due to limited screen real estate available on these small devices, a user may have to repeatedly select a page down key in order to view an entire page of interest. If a hyperlink of interest were to be selected after the user completed the reading of the document, then the user may have to repeatedly hit the back button and/or the page up key after reading the document in order to find and select the hyperlink of interest. Consequently, in order to finish reading a document before selecting a hyperlink, the user may have even more displayed screens of pages to go back through when using a small device as a Web client than when using a Web client having a larger screen display.
Each time the back button or page up key is selected, different screen data is rendered. Each time a user makes a selection (e.g., selecting a page up key or a back button), and each time different data is rendered to the screen display, more and more time is consumed. It is desirable to minimize the number of selections a user must make and the amount of time spent in making those selections and in rendering displayed pages.